our hearts are oceans, our ribs are cages
by o-seastarved
Summary: Bellamy shifted on his stump and cleared his throat, looked at her with something searching. It was the drop ship they were talking about, yes, but also what they created around the drop ship. What they built from nothing. That is was the two of them that led it, that they made the rules and they carried the burden of running things. And they missed it.
1. Chapter 1

It was before dawn and the coldest morning Bellamy had yet to experience on Earth. He shivered and pulled the collar of his jacket tight around his neck. He'd found a far corner of camp Jaha where the wires of the fence were strapped lazily so that a wide enough view existed of the rolling hills outside. For a few moments before the people of the Ark woke each day he could sit there and pretend he was free.

A twig snapped behind him and he turned. "Oh," he said. "It's just you."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Yep, just me," she parroted sarcastically and thrust a tin of hot tea in front of him. He looked from her to the blooming strings of steam. "Oh, come on. Take it. Monty's own recipe."

Bellamy took the mug and wrapped his hands around it, letting the warmth seep from the metal into his skin, while Clarke sat down on the stump next to him. Silence settled in as they sipped their tea; he looked out and she looked down at the grass.

"I heard they call this a frost," she said after a while, eyes fixed on the ground. Her hand grazed over the blades of grass at her feet. They were stiff and crunchy, slightly dusted with something white. "Kind of beautiful."

"We're not equipped for winter." He kept his gaze fixed in front of him even as he felt hers burning into him. "Even if the Ark supplies- technology, medicine, those damn tasers- last us this year, they're going to run out. And then what?"

"I know," was all Clarke said and when he met her eyes he knew he didn't need to say any more. He didn't need to tell her the tech would die and that Raven and Wick building a power supply wouldn't be scalable enough. He didn't need to tell her that the guardsmen hunting with their semis would leave them without bullets in a year. Or that their clothing would tatter and fall off and that none of them had any idea what winter was actually like.

"The Ark's way of doing things…it won't work down here," was all he said. They drank their tea in silence as the sun rose up over the hills and the first people of the camp stirred for morning duties.

xxx

Soon that little corner of camp Jaha changed from being Bellamy's morning ritual to becoming their morning ritual. He thought he would mind. He went there to be alone with his thoughts, his dreams, his regrets, but found that he could be alone with Clarke beside him. More often than not they'd sit in silence. She would bring the tea, he would remark that she needed something warmer to wear, she would shrug. And they would settle in.

Life had slowed down. The forty-seven were back, the truce was holding in place. Of course there were hunting wounds and the acid fog and constant preparation for confrontation with The Mountain Men. That one stomach virus from an improperly boiled tub of drinking water. But all in all the machinations of the Ark and its leadership were churning and screeching towards building something on Earth.

"This doesn't feel like home," he said one morning when the clouds were thin and runny and pink.

"Do you miss it?" Clarke asked.

Bellamy drew in a heavy breath that puffed up his chest, let himself deflate when he let it out. "Every day."

"Yeah," Clarke said and looked into her tea. "Me too."

Bellamy shifted on his stump and cleared his throat, looked at her with something searching. It was the drop ship they were talking about, yes, but also what they created around the drop ship. What they built from nothing. That is was the two of them that led it, that they made the rules and they carried the burden of running things. And they missed it.

"Well," Clarke blinked and came back from wherever she had gone to at the bottom of her tin mug. "You'll be running things in no time. Guardsmen are already lining up to follow your lead."

Bellamy licked his lips and dropped his head. "Yeah, maybe."

Maybe. Maybe Clarke wasn't far off in her prediction. But was it what he wanted? He wasn't so sure. Something tugged tight in his chest when he thought of the future mapped out for him. Leading the guard, Clarke on the council with him, doing it their way. But Kane and Jaha and even Abby stood in their way, tied to their old-world laws and their blind belief in a certain modus operandi. When they looked at him, they saw a working class delinquent. When they looked at Clarke, they didn't see what he saw, they saw a girl just shy of eighteen.

It was that morning that Bellamy decided he was going to leave. He didn't want to take over the Ark's story and lead it like some rickety spaceship pretending it could fly in the dirt. He was going to start over, with Octavia and Lincoln and Monroe and Miller. Not Raven. Not Clarke. They were needed here. They would do good here. They had people here. He wouldn't ask Clarke to leave her mother, to gamble on a pipe dream because he felt lost and powerless and trapped.

He was going to tell his own damn story.

xxx

"Why does this boar meat taste like crap?" Bellamy grunted and dropped his fork with a clang back on his plate. "Who's the cook at this damn camp anyway?" A heel dug into his toes under the table that caught him by surprise and forced him to clench his jaw. He shot a stormy look at Clarke, who raised her eyebrows in mid-chew.

"They replaced our people with a team from the Ark," Jasper said glumly.

Clarke finished chewing and grabbed her water canteen and began to chug. Bellamy smiled at the sight.

"Plus they shot the shit out of the hog," Raven said. "Fifty bullets is its flesh is not going to do us any favors."

Bellamy shot Clarke a look only to find that she was shooting him one right back.

Later she grabbed his arm on his way to his tent. "Wanna get out of here?" Her eyes gleamed with a fierce defiance.

He looked to where her fingers snaked around his elbow, then back up. "Making a run for it, Princess? The dinner wasn't that bad."

"Tomorrow morning, meet by Raven's gate. You're gonna teach me how to hunt." And she stalked off.

They snuck out and into the woods before dawn, as quiet as their morning ritual. The grass, which he now learned was called frosted, crunched under their boots and flocks of birds fluttered their wings as they flew from tree to tree.

"It'll be harder this time of year, the trees aren't providing much cover," Bellamy said as he surveyed the woods.

"Didn't say I wasn't up for a challenge," Clarke said haughtily.

The corners of his mouth ticked up as he unhooked his axe from his belt. "What do you say we get some target practice in before settling in for a stakeout."

He guided her through axe throwing, spears, and rifles. Turned out she was a force to be reckoned with with a spear. Darts, she told him. By her count she'd beaten Wells at darts four hundred and sixty seven times.

They found a spot of dirt behind a gigantic tree root and crouched on their stomachs. Bellamy shifted when their shoulders brushed but it seemed there was no escaping the contact. Clarke's eyes darted over to him. It wasn't that it was altogether unpleasant, or that it was particularly abnormal. It was the awareness of it. Like there was nothing else in his current world but her shoulder against his. He gritted his teeth and focused straight ahead.

After twenty minutes her teeth were chattering.

"You're shivering."

"I'm fine," she said and blew into her hands.

"You're not," he protested. "We should go back."

"We haven't spotted a thing yet. No. We'll wait."

Bellamy shifted and began to tug his jacket off. "Ok," he said quietly and threw it over Clarke's shoulders before returning to his place. "And don't complain, I'll be fine without it," he added before she could protest. She stared at him for a long moment and pressed her lips together like she was fighting herself not to say a thing. And she didn't. Just returned to her post.

Another hour passed and the only life for miles came in the form of fluttering squirrels chasing each other up and down the trees.

"We should set squirrel traps," Clarke whispered.

"Smart. Might be good for winter. Lucky if we caught a couple of foxes," he said.

"And stews. We'll be low on vegetables," she said.

"Clarke…"

"Yeah?"

"Why now?"

Clarke shrugged under his jacket. "I'm sick of being useless." She looked at him. "Like you."

He nodded slightly.

She sighed. "My mom…she helps everyone better than I ever could. The truce….I just…"

"You miss it," Bellamy interjected, his voice low and quiet. "Leading."

Clarke hesitated before nodding, her eyes wide and troubled. "Am I awful?"

"No," he whispered. It almost wasn't there. But she heard it. "We make the rules, right?"

She sniffled and nodded back at him before holding up her hand in a swift, alert motion. Alarmed, Bellamy reached for his gun. Clarke pointed behind him to where a deer was grazing, facing away from them. He handed her the gun. "No," she whispered vehemently.

"Clarke. You got this," he insisted and shifted behind her. She looked back at him for reassurance, then lined up the shot. "Easy," he said and set a hand on her back. "Breathe." She did. And the shot tore through the barrel with a bang.

The deer fell and they were on their feet. It was bucking wildly, hit in its right thigh. Clarke froze, locking eyes with the wild, deep ones of her prey. Bellamy squeezed her shoulder before passing her to crouch down over the deer's head. He touched it between the eyes and stroked it softly as he pulled his knife from his belt and held it to her throat. As he pulled it along her speckled fur, his thumb kept stroking her temple, back and forth. After a minute the blood seeped out enough so that her eyes fluttered and grew dim.

Bellamy wiped his face along his sleeve. Clarke was staring holes into him, her mouth hanging open ever so slightly.

"Perfect," he said.

She tore her gaze away from him and back to the animal dead at their feet. "We should skin it. For its hide."

Bellamy's eyes nearly sparkled. "Resourceful, Princess."

xxx

They brought the deer to Octavia to skin.

"Nice shot, Bell."

"It was Clarke, actually," he corrected with pride.

Octavia was ecstatic to have such a clean shot to work with, thinking she could salvage almost the entire hide and start working on a jacket or a vest, maybe even a sleeping skin.

"You can make all of that?" Clarke asked in amazement.

"Oh hell yeah. Picked it up from my mom. I'm the world's best seamstress, but it's the world's best kept secret so-," Octavia made a zip-it motion with her blade across her neck.

When she was done they butchered the carcas and delivered it to the kitchen, side eyeing the guard who was just hauling in a massacred hog, rife with bullets.

The days grew shorter, and their time together grew longer. Quiet tea at dawn, a frosted trek just after, setting up snares and traps and then staking out.

Planning. They talked of food and winter and discussed indoor fire hearths and wooden huts and foraging for onions before the ground froze for good. An apothecary with an index of herbal remedies.

Clarke speared a hog one day.

Talking. That he was good at history. Of the girls that were mean to her in school. About Earth. The way it smelled and sounded. The way sucking in the cold air hurt in the lungs but somehow they both reveled at the same sensation. The lack of temperature control. Humidity, rain, the smell of mud. Clarke never stopped puffing out hot air into the atmosphere just to see her own little cloud created. Bellamy always dipped his head to shield his smile.

Turns out squirrels didn't taste as bad as he'd thought.

"This food is so good I could kiss you both," Raven exclaimed at dinner.

"Please don't," Bellamy groused.

Raven wiggled her eyebrows at him. "Squirrel stew. Who knew."

"I did," Clarke piped up proudly, slightly chirpily.

"Seriously though, how have you two not been arrested yet?" Monty practically whined. He was dying to get out and build his own little shack out of scrap metal in which to tend to…herbs and such.

"The food's too good. Kane can't even complain," Jasper said through a slurp.

"Speaking of…" Bellamy trailed off and shot Clarke a look. They both got up from their seats, twisting out from under the benches in unison. The others were used to it by now, and let them to their obsessive need for camp betterment. As they made their break from dinner Abby passed them and stopped.

"Clarke," she called, but her daughter was brushing past her with purpose.

"Sorry mom, gotta go."

Bellamy hung back to put himself between the Griffins and let Clarke walk ahead. He lingered just long enough to catch Abby ask their table where they were always off to.

"You know. Hero complex stuff," he heard Monty said.

xxx

"I can't believe we're seriously mapping out where to find wild onions," Clarke shook her head and kicked at the ground with the toe of her boot, a half smile worn on her face.

"Onions, replacing gunpowder on the list of most precious of resources," Bellamy quipped and her half smile turned into a breathy half laugh.

"Beats playing dice with Monty and Jasper all night," she said.

Silence hung for a beat as Bellamy lost himself in the waves of her tangled locks, willing himself to pull away and look at the map they were drawing in the dirt with sticks. "Yeah, it does."

Clarke mused on about hillsides and valleys and the warmest part of the day and how to time their trek just right in order to be back by dark and Bellamy heard her, he always heard her, but he also became acutely aware of a shift in the air. One that was very still, colder than usual, but not bitingly so. It was comfortable and calm and he'd never experienced anything quite like it before.

"Clarke," he said. "You feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"The change in the air," he said.

She gawked at him with a quizzical are you crazy brow, but it melted away. She was looking past his shoulder, almost squinting.

"What?" he said.

"Look," she practically whispered and darted a hand past him and into the air to catch a single falling snowflake. It touched her palm and disappeared instantly. She looked up. "Bellamy, look," she said again and he obliged. Speckled against the black sky tiny dots of white were floating like feathers down towards them.

For several still minutes they stood in silence, with heads tilted back and mouths agape in wonder.

"This is better than rain," Bellamy said quietly.

"There you guys are!" Octavia's breathless voice, like she just ran all the way to them, popped their bubble of meditation. "Come on, it's the first snowfall. Which means we're sneaking out."

"What for?" Clarke asked.

"Grounder ritual. Come on, Lincoln's planned it all. He says it's going to be a perfect snowfall."

"Shit. There goes the onions," Bellamy said, followed by a knowing look from Clarke. They'd be frozen over for good now.

"You two seriously need to chill," Octavia shook her head and gave Bellamy's shoulder an affectionate shove. "Loosen up, have some fun." She shot a peculiar glance towards Clarke and a twinkle in her eye. "Plus, big brother, I need to you carry a barrel of Monty's moonshine."

While their truce with the grounders was shaky at best, Lincoln and Octavia had managed to build bridges and bring together a small group of Grounders and most of the forty-seven. The tradition went that on the first snowfall of the year, different villages and tribes would each bring an offering and they would trade, share, drink, play music, tell tales, and celebrate the beauty of the snow ahead of the long, hard winter to come.

Bellamy hauled a barrel of moonshine, their offering, through a makeshift entryway made of stacked river rocks. Beyond the threshold tree trunks and stumps were set up as seating around several deep orange fire pits. Clarke had fallen behind to walk with Raven, and the rest of the sky people filed in as Grounders milled about and set up instruments and seating and lay out hides and furs. Several rabbits were turning on spits over one of the fires.

"Welcome, my friend," Lincoln approached as Bellamy set the moonshine down and embraced him in a warm hug. "Tonight we feast and drink. Our winters last long and this…" he pointed to the sky. "…grows bleak and grey."

"Yeah, about that. Got any tips?" Bellamy said, all business, but with a smile flickering across his face.

"Later," Lincoln reassured. "Octavia swore me to-"

"Swore you to promise that my brother have a good time tonight," Octavia interjected, with arms closing around Lincoln and a sloppy grin.

"Did she now?" Bellamy teased.

"She did," Octavia said. "Now crack open the damn moonshine."

"Yes, God. Please," Raven's deadpan voice crept up behind him. She was out of breath and her jaw drawn tight. Clarke followed soberly by her side, hands in her pockets.

Octavia started doling out moonshine and the crowd huddled around her. Bellamy saw Clarke hang back and shiver. He pushed through the crowd.

"Raven?" he asked.

Clarke just let out a heavy breath.

"She's hiding it well," he said. The corners of Clarke's mouth dipped down as she visibly tried to shake off the heavy sadness she had acquired on the walk up the hill. Clarke seeped up others pain like it was her own. "Come on, let's get you a drink."

Moonshine in hand, they surveyed the crowd. "Your people are cold," Lincoln said as he approached them once more. "Seems we both brought offerings to relieve the cold. Your moonshine and…" Lincoln waved to some men behind him and they hurled a mound of hides and pelts onto their shoulders. The men began distributing them to each of the forty seven, a pleasant, excited murmur whispering through the crowd, but Bellamy and Clarke were rendered speechless. A humbled speechlessness. Lincoln and Octavia exchanged a glimmering look from across the fire.

And so grounder and sky people alike gathered around warm embers, shared drinks, and settled onto the log seats, their shoes crunching into the soft snow. Soon all were wrapped in their new animal pelts and furs, hands cupped around drinks, huddled around the fires. Grounders gathered at the center flame and began to assemble on stumps and set up various contraptions and instruments. Unassumingly, one began to tap softly against a drum. Soon another joined him. And another. Something similar to a flute, a string instrument, but mostly drums in every shape and size, every kind of animal hide pulled tightly across the tops.

When the cups were scraping the bottom of the barrel and the last of the moonshine had been distributed, Bellamy threw up his hands and crossed his heart to Octavia, swearing he'd go be carefree. He picked at one of the roasting rabbits and threw a sinewy strand of meat into his mouth with a pop. Washing it down with his drink, he looked around. Octavia was sitting on Lincoln's lap, engrossed in the music and gently nodding her head in tune with its rhythm. Raven was commanding Jasper and Monty's undivided attention.

And Clarke. Where was Clarke?

He scanned the crowd and found her sitting on the edge of an empty log, third row back from the center. She was looking down into her drink. He had come to learn that was a particularly Clarke thing she did. He circled around the perimeter of the central campfire, as he approached he could feel the warmth of the embers leaving his skin the the air pop open again. It was less stifling, and he filled his lungs with cold air. He now knew why she was sitting where she was. Far enough away from the oxygen suffocating flames, but close enough still that the golden light lapped at her hair and at the corners of her face when she looked up and let her gaze trace over her people, happy and at ease, her features reverent and serene. She could take it all in from here.

"Well, Princess," he said, throwing a leg over the trunk and sitting to face her. "You sure do know how to have a good time."

She looked up and while her face remained serious, her eyes reflected the fire, bright and light. "You're one to talk."

He held up his hands in resignation.

"Not easy being in charge, is it?" he teased.

She sipped her drink before holding it up. "Doomed to drink ourselves stupid in silence."

"I'll cheers to that," he said and clinked his tin against hers.

They relaxed into a comfortable silence as they drank and listened to music they had never heard in their short lives. Bellamy felt it in his chest, in his bones, and couldn't ever recall feeling that feeling before. The drum beat followed his heart and fluttered in his stomach and spiked in his veins. He glanced over at Clarke and found her head lightly bobbing, her fingers strumming against her cup. The fur of her new pelt stood up at her shoulders and tickled her jaw.

"It's beautiful," she spoke, as if she knew he was staring. "The snow."

Several inches deep now and still floating from the sky, it had covered the earth in a white blanket, a term he had found silly when he read about it in school, but which he now knew was really the only way to describe it. It muffled the air and quieted it so that every sound was more precise and crisp than it had been before. The world reverberated off of it.

And with the snow on the ground and the beat in his chest and the flush in his cheeks and the moonshine in his head and the glow against her jaw, he reached out his hand. Tentative and delicate, his fingers touched hers. She looked down at their hands against the bark, but made no effort to move. He ghosted over her knuckles, found the spaces in between. Hers arched up, his dipped under, and their palms lifted from the trunk and like dancing webs, their hands explored the different ways they could intertwine. Fingers through fingers, his clasped over hers and locked in, knuckle to knuckle. It was like playing with magnets, he could feel the energy, the push, the pull. His skin was on fire and it wasn't from the flames.

Bellamy looked up at her, locking into her eyes, her face unreadable except for the fullness and the curve of her lips. So often they were pulled thin. Her eyes were pleading, pulling, yearning, questioning. Open.

A heavy snowflake fell on her cheek, right below her eye and he broke their interlocking to reach out the pad of his thumb and swipe it, softly, gently, away as it melted into water. Clarke's eyelashes fluttered and he slid his fingers through her hair and snaked around her ear, cupping her face in his hand. She stilled, almost froze, and he could hear her breath grow short and ragged. He continued on, possessed by the oceans in her eyes and the flush fluttering across the bridge of her nose, and brushed the tips of his fingers along her jawline, against her neck, where he applied the slightest pressure. Her breath hitched in her throat. Bellamy wanted to play her body like an instrument. He traced his thumb along the edge of her collarbone. He wanted to feel every bone.

"Clarke!"

His hand snapped away in an instant and she jumped.

"Clarke! Come on, we need you." Jasper's voice howled and whooped, as Monty, Raven and others echoed their agreement. She was being beckoned. "Only you can settle this!" Clarke looked back at Bellamy, and he threw his eyes over to the crowd, a quiet signal to go.

After a matter of minutes he felt much colder, his surroundings much darker without her there for the fire to reflect and bounce off of her.

The snow continued to fall for some time. The longer it fell the more Bellamy's plan was being buried under it. Clarke Griffin had gotten under his skin, and he didn't know if he could walk away without her.

* * *

><p><em>Please forgive my snail's pace, I've never moved this slow before, but I got really into working methodically within the canon. (Except Finn basically doesn't exist. I didn't feel like dealing with that baggage). Promise to deliver on the M rating next chapter. In a big way.<em>


	2. Chapter 2

_I don't even know how I wrote such a long chapter. Stick with me, promises of delectably steamy things at the end. _

* * *

><p>Clarke pulled back the flap to her tent and stepped out into a different world, a world of white. Everywhere she looked was covered with snow. The morning sun reflected off of it and forced her to squint her eyes from the brightness. Still, cold, silent. Her boots crunched the top layer of snow, cracking its hardened edges before sinking down several inches. The crunch popped in her ears, louder and more crisp as she invaded the morning peace.<p>

She brewed her usual two cups of tea routinely, only stopping to inhale sharply before leaving the commissary tent with both in hand. She had to keep things normal, there was work to be done. She found herself unable to exhale until she came up the little hill to their corner and found him wiping the snow off his stump so he could sit down.

He looked up when the crunching of her boots entered their bubble of space and she handed him his tea. Bellamy nodded his thanks as he wrapped his hands, red from cold, around the tin. Clarke made moves to wipe off her own seat, but he jerked in front of her in a swift, sudden movement and cleared hers for her.

She nodded her thanks and sat down. It was going to be one of those mornings where they sat in silence, only this time it didn't feel comfortable. She had slept fitfully, if at all. Every time sleep loomed her mind would wander back to Bellamy's fingers woven through her own, how his hands were large and bony and strong. Bellamy's thumb on her cheek. Bellamy's fingers in her hair. Bellamy's….and then a heated flush would creep up her neck and she'd throw her blanket off and thrash about some more.

And now she was pretending to be still when really his mere presence two feet away from her made her want to thrash about in frustration some more.

Truth was, Clarke had no idea what in the hell was going on.

"We going hunting today?" Bellamy asked after some time.

"My mom put me on lunch duty today," Clarke said.

"So she did," he said, skeptically. If he could glare at Abby right then he would have.

"And the next five days," she said quietly.

Bellamy's jaw twitched in anger. He stared down hard at his boot.

She hardly saw him over the course of the next five days, save for at dawn. She went about her assigned chores like everyone else, and hated herself for feeling that she shouldn't be one of the masses. She washed dishes and wanted to cry, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve when her hands were submerged in the frigid cold water. It was so stupid, and then tears pricked her eyes some more because of how stupid it was to get weepy over not being special. She mentally kicked herself for being a brat, even though deep down she secretly knew it was a deeper frustration brimming at the whites of her eyes, and not a childish stubbornness. Of course, Bellamy would have told her as much, if he saw her at all. But he didn't, so she suffered on her own with a heaviness in her chest that made her breath shallow and her lungs ache.

On day five she skipped dinner, too melancholy and subsequently guilty over her melancholia to face any of her peers.

"There you are." He had caught up with her wandering through the far perimeter walkways near her tent, his voice low and gruff and soothing.

"Hey," was all she could muster in a small voice.

His eyes squinted, noting her demeanor instantly. "You survived," he said, forcing a cheery tone, pretending not to see how glum she looked.

"It was life and death for a minute there," she joked dryly.

"Hey," he said and caught her chin with his thumb and forefinger, lifted it up to meet his gaze. "Let's get out of here. Tomorrow."

She nodded and pressed her lips together, drawn thin to keep her eyes from glassing over.

"Our onion dreams may be dashed but I can think of a fox trap or two worth checking in on," he added.

In that moment Clarke wanted to get out of there with him forever.

xxx

Trudging uphill through the snow was much more difficult than she had imagined. Every step was met with resistance and every stride deliberate and heavy. She'd worn her grounder fur, partly because it was cold, and partly because she was tired of hiding it in her tent where it was getting no use.

"Grounder gear looks good on you, Princess," Bellamy said, passing her as they set out for the woods.

And maybe she wore it because she remembered the way Bellamy looked at her when she wore it first. Just maybe.

Once over the big hill they fell in step, en route to the first trap. If asked to recount their walk, Clarke would say it was positively boring. The tents will have to be moved to circle around a central fire, one for each section. And we'll have to work on getting you moved over to my barracks. It was only logical, Clarke agreed. The grounders' furs and pelts were unlike any animal they knew of. There must be bigger game they've been missing. And it's downright stupid to have to hide them from the rest of camp, then what's even the point?

They rambled on like that, stopping by trap after trap to find each even emptier than the last, until they checked the last one and Clarke had barely registered how much time had passed. It was on this foundation that their mutual trust and respect must have been built, and then friendship. Clarke couldn't think of anyone else that operated the same way she did. It felt almost intimate.

"Hey, Clarke!" Bellamy called, suddenly somewhere behind her.

She shook off her thoughts. But not fast enough. She turned, half disoriented, and was met with a stinging, cold, and wet smack to the side of her face.

Mouth agape, she let out a shrill yelp and shuddered. Her withering glare met a wide grin. "It's called a snowball," he said, scooping up more snow into his hand, packing it and rounding it with the other.

"I know what a snowball is," she said.

"Not something they teach in Earth Skills." Bellamy inspected his snowball and then drew his arm back.

Her eyes widened. "No. Bellamy…." She warned, then managed to dart and duck behind a tree as the second snowball flew at her, clipping her left leg only.

"Come on, Clarke," he teased. "Fight or die. What's it gonna be?"

She smiled to herself behind the cover of the tree trunk and began to scoop up snow and pat it into a ball. She listened for the crunch of Bellamy's boots, hearing him reach for more snow to her left. With a burst she was turning and hurling hers at him. His head down, hand in the snow, it caught him right on the top of the head.

"Oh, you're dead now," Bellamy said, shaking out his hair. When he looked up she was gone, darting between trees.

"Try me," she called back as she ran.

Clarke nearly giggled. Nearly. She felt a funny feeling in her chest, like a lightness that was filling her up and threatening to lift her feet off the ground like a balloon. She was almost dizzy from it. Rivulets of water curled down her collarbone, icy cold and electric.

She threw another. Missed.

He angled diagonally. Clipped her shoulder.

She ran uphill. Got him in the chest. And again in the thigh. And left arm. He was barreling up the hill after her and her advantage of higher ground was perfect for an onslaught.

"Dammit, Clarke," he growled as he hauled himself up the hill. This time she did giggle. It sounded weird and foreign to her. Like her fifteen year old self. Like the sound of a person long gone coming back as a ghost.

He reached her faster than she'd thought, and still contemplating the strangeness of her current state, Bellamy managed to blindside her with a hand full of snow on the top of her head. A surprised yelp turned into a gasp as he ground his palm full of snow straight into her scalp. Her mouth fell open and stayed that way as the cold seeped into her. She was eye to eye with his shoulder. Even his shoulder looked smug. Sure enough, she flicked her gaze up to find Bellamy grinning practically ear to ear.

"Cheater," she said.

"Always." His tongue darted out and curled up at his front teeth. Jesus. Clarke all but stopped breathing. Which probably explained the extremely childish thing she did next. She pushed him. But when she did her right foot slid on the packed snow underneath her and she slipped, one leg sliding in between his and as she propelled backwards, he lost his footing and tumbled forward.

They came to a stop several feet down the hill. All tangled limbs and disheveled hair, they groaned in unison. Clarke blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and found Bellamy on top of her, raising himself up on his forearms. But he stopped.

"What?" Clarke said, nearly breathless.

He was just staring down at her, hair in his eyes, snow packed into the insides of his jacket. Her heart raced, heat rose to her cheeks. For a moment they were suspended, still, silent, save for their ragged breaths. Hers would come right after his, like a staccato symphony of heavy breathing. She didn't know if he would kiss her or kill her. Do something.

She became acutely aware of his thigh between both of hers. Of the side of his pelvic bone against her abdomen. Of the rise and fall of his chest as it hovered over her, enveloped her.

He licked his lips.

Do something.

He cleared his throat. "We should get back," he said, voice thick and hoarse.

And then he got up, and broke the spell.

Clarke didn't like how she felt without his weight against her. She felt like she might float away.

xxx

When they snuck back into camp she was shivering. Her hair and clothes were damp and she wanted nothing more than to grab some tea and sit by the fire.

"You're shivering," he noted. All the way back they had remained silent, looking straight ahead, down, up, anywhere but at each other.

She was about to answer him, with what she didn't know, when Raven intersected them.

She ignored Bellamy and headed right for Clarke. "Watch out, your mom's on the warpath." Within seconds Clarke spotted her mother stalking towards with a wide, purposeful stride.

"Useful warning," Bellamy said dryly. Raven crossed her arms and shot him her signature withering glare.

Abby reached the trio. "Clarke." She glanced briefly, dismissively at Bellamy. Even Raven. "Let's talk."

Clarke stepped forward, and Bellamy must have too, because Abby stalled and looked him up and down. "Alone," she said pointedly to Clarke. Clarke kept her eyes trained on his for a long moment as she left with her mother.

Abby had an office setup off of the infirmary. All metal, dim lighting. Not cozy.

"This has to stop," Abby said.

"What has to stop?"

"You and Bellamy."

Clarke tensed. She wasn't sure how to answer. There was definitely a her and Bellamy, but not in that way. "What do you mean?" she asked. Safe. Tentative.

"This thing you do together. Running around, pretending to save the world. It's childish, Clarke," Abby said.

Clarke flinched as if she'd been slapped. "We're a team," she began slowly. "And we know Earth. You know that."

She saw Abby's eyes grow shiny and wide under the hiss of the tiny light fixed on the ceiling. She hated the sound of electrical humming.

"I hardly see you anymore," Abby said and her voice cracked. "I thought we were a team…." she trailed off. Clarke's face softened, but she had nothing to say. "You're punishing me," Abby finally continued. "For your father."

Clarke looked away, to the far wall, crossed her arms. "Now is not the time."

Abby threw up her hands. "Well when is, Clarke? Hmm? When you say so?"

"Yes," Clarke said, ice cold. She'd found a crooked nail on the wall to study.

Abby swallowed, rerouted to the issue at hand. "Kane and Thelonious are jumping down my throat over your daily trips outside of camp. It doesn't matter how much food you bring back. There is a way of doing things and in order for the Ark's society to survive down here we have to keep some semblance of structure and…what's that you're wearing?"

Clarke glanced at her grounder pelt. "It's nothing."

"Where did you get that?"

"Mom-"

"Clarke, I swear to god if you lie to me I will have you arrested right here, right now."

She had seen her mother's hardness. She had seen her like steel before. But she had never experienced a true and honest threat like this.

"It was a gift. At first snow," Clarke answered, voice softer than it had been.

"How many?" Abby pried. "How many, Clarke?" she continued at her silence.

"The forty-eight. And the rest. Murphy, Raven, Octavia. Bellamy."

Abby fell silent. The two of them were leaning against opposite tables, arms crossed, staring at the cold metal walls of the office. Clarke clenched and unclenched her jaw.

"You can't just roll us out whenever you need help dealing with the Grounders or need more information on the Reapers or Mountain Men, and then roll us back in and expect-"

"Us meaning you and Bellamy?" Abby interrupted.

"I trust him," Clarke said defiantly. "Completely."

"He shot Thelonious," Abby said, raising her voice.

"He was pardoned," Clarke matched her.

"Are you sleeping together?"

Clarke reeled. That was out of left field, or however that expression about baseball went. Or was it? She looked at her mother. Abby's jealousy, pain, all of her insecurity was suddenly apparent. It was written all over her. Clarke found her sudden emotional clouding revolting. She hated it. She didn't want to see her mother in this new light. It made her look pathetic and weak. Even more, Clarke hated how superior she now felt to her mother. She wasn't an equal, but another person crippled by her own demons. Another person thinking all wrong. It was as if someone had come into her happily dark room while she was sleeping and woken her by tearing the curtains from the windows, allowing the violent, scarring light to flood in and wreak havoc.

Disillusionment had never hit so hard.

"Your loss of perspective is surprising, Mom. Especially since you could keep it so in tact when you sent Dad to his death." Clarke's voice was cold and clipped and shook with anger.

They endured a terrible silence.

"Listen to me," Abby finally said in a lowered voice, grave and dark. "You can't just go around doing whatever the hell you want. You don't make the rules."

Clarke would have laughed at the irony had tears not been stinging her eyes. She blinked them away furiously.

When she stormed out of the ship she jolted when rounding the outer corner of her mother's office, nearly running straight in to Bellamy and Raven. The walls were just metal, thin enough to hear. She didn't particularly mind, but she didn't particularly want to discuss it either. She held up a hand to halt Bellamy when she saw his mouth open and brushed past them.

On her way to her tent she caught sight of a group of Arkers working on skinning freshly killed foxes. She bit her bottom lip to quell smiling to herself. Bastard had already checked the traps.

xxx

She skipped dinner. Having an appetite was becoming increasingly difficult. Instead, she wrapped herself in her sleeping blanket as she dried her damp clothes by the fire and just sort of stared. She thought of Bellamy's face illuminated by the fire, half of it in deep shadow, the other half illuminated by a rich sea of orange. When the flames licked and jumped, so did the reflections of them along his cheekbone.

She didn't know why she thought of it. She still hadn't processed what it meant when his fingertips splayed along her collarbone, or what it meant that she had stopped breathing when they did.

"Hey. Seat taken?" Raven said, but was already seated by the end of her question.

"You can see how occupied I am by all my friends," Clarke said, throwing a glance at the empty seating around the fire.

Raven raised an eyebrow. As good as a laugh from her.

The wood popped and crackled, spit out a few embers into the air. Clarke sighed as she followed them to their death on the ground.

"You know, this thing with you and Bellamy," Raven began.

Clarke rolled her eyes.

"Relax. Just. Your whole…thing," Raven made a whirling gesture with her arms.

"Ah," Clarke lifted her chin and nodded it down emphatically. "Yes. The thing." She was feeling cynical tonight. She knew Raven wouldn't mind.

"You realize you're either gonna have to do something drastic or give up, right?"

"Drastic how?"

"Like ditching this place drastic," Raven clarified.

Clarke took a long moment, considered it. "We can't," she said quietly.

"Then like I said. To keep fighting, it'd be a lost cause," Raven said.

"You're not one to give up on anything."

Raven cocked her head to the side. "True. Never said I was smart. I'll fight a losing battle from the get go just to be an asshole. But that's not you."

Clarke stared into the fire until she saw red streaks when she blinked. Like the flames were etched on her irises.

"I slept with him, you know," Raven said after a while. Clarke wanted to ask who but she already knew. "Used him, really. To get over Finn." Raven poked the fire with a stick. "Think I made him feel like crap, though."

"Why?" Clarke felt stupid. She was bad at this kind of thing.

"A boy with that body. It's gonna get in the way. Become the only thing he's wanted for," Raven mused.

Sometime later Clarke found herself outside of Bellamy's tent. His shadow played like an accordion, large and small, large and small, against the fabric. The front flap was partially unzipped, so she tugged at it, trying to make it as loud as possible to announce her presence.

"Clarke," he said, pulling his shirt over his head.

"Hi," she said, caught off guard by his sculpted chest. She remembered what Raven had said earlier. "Um." She turned away, suddenly flustered.

"Nothing you haven't seen before," he said and crossed in front of her to hang it on a makeshift wire hook.

"The fire," she piped up unusually loudly and he turned. "By the fire will work better. For that," she finished, softly this time.

His face fell into a lopsided half confused smile. "Thanks. Top notch advice. What's up?"

Clarke blinked. She wanted to reach out a hand and let her fingers explore the hard, supple curve of his pectorals, the lines of his abs. Instead she wrung her hands together. "Nothing. Um, yeah nothing. It's been a…weird day." She hastily made to turn around and get out as fast as possible, but the zipper stuck. She yanked at it.

"Wait," Bellamy's voice was odd and strained. She turned to find him inches from her and the damned zipper. "You okay?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I be?" Her wavering voice betrayed her.

"Two weeks of laundry duty is pretty rough. You're mom is no joke."

Clarke's face fell. "She did that?" It was barely a whisper. She couldn't find her vocal chords, they stuck somewhere in her throat like the damned zipper.

She pictured her hands, dry and cracked raw from being submerged in the freezing stream all day. They'd heard the recent stories. Laundry duty had quickly become the least coveted of all jobs at Camp Jaha. She'd be chilled to the bone, day in and day out, with barely enough time to get warm overnight before heading out again the next morning. Abby was treating at least four of the usuals for mild hypothermia and blistered hands. Some of them could barely hold a spoon at dinner.

"I have…I have to go," she stammered and shakily fought with the zipper. Bellamy's hands stilled her own and gently took over, wiggling the zipper free.

As she stepped out he stopped her. "Listen, Clarke I…" She waited, but he stalled. He scratched the back of his head. "Nothing. Goodnight." And he dipped his head down.

That night she barely slept. She cried herself to sleep but it took hours, and once she did she was met with nightmares that tossed and turned her awake until she just lay on her back, staring up at the dull grey of her tent ceiling. Nothing. A whole lot of nothings.

xxx

"Pssst."

Clarke groaned and turned over. She was absolutely not waking up right now.

"Pssst. Clarke," a forceful whisper invaded her dreams.

The damn zipper. Stuck again.

Suddenly she was falling up. Her eyes snapped open and her right arm shot under her pillow instinctively for her knife.

A hand clasped down over her mouth. Octavia smirked down at her, dangling her knife in front of her with a glint in her eye. She unclasped her mouth. "Get up. We're going shopping."

"Shopping?" Clarke rubbed her eyes. Her head felt cloudy.

"For the big guns," Octavia said and tugged at her fur vest.

Clarke pulled herself up onto her elbows. "I can't."

Octavia rolled her eyes. "Please. We've got you covered. Now come on," she slapped Clarke's leg under her blanket. "Gotta sneak out while it's still dark out."

Bellamy was waiting on the other side of the fence with a pack and a gun for her. The three of them set out well before dawn, aiming for a deeper, higher part of the forest. Lincoln had drawn Octavia a map, and ventured it was a three day trip there and back. Especially if they shot a bear or a moose, it'd take the better part of a day to butcher and skin it on site and bring the hide and best cuts of meat back to camp. Turned out Raven had been double agenting Abby and knew exactly who on laundry duty to bribe to lie that Clarke was working diligently. The rest of them, Raven, Jasper, Monty, devised a plan to keep Abby and the imaginary Clarke on separate paths that never crossed. It was a shotty plan, but she appreciated the effort.

Her teeth were chattering like mad in the dark.

"Once we get going we'll warm up. Sun'll come up," Bellamy said with a hand grazing her back as he passed her.

The hike was punishing. Constantly uphill, the snow tugging at their feet, pulling them back with every step off the ground. Most of the day was spent in silence, navigating the forest as it grew more dense. Trying to keep moving, weighing the fact that the pace was brutal but did they really want to slow down and be colder?

By midday Clarke was struggling to keep up. Exhausted from no sleep, having barely eaten in days, and the emotional weight of her mother, of Raven, Bellamy, the entire camp, she felt it more in every step.

Bellamy kept looking back at her, but she pretended not to notice, her gaze always trained off to the left.

"Stop staring," she heard Octavia mumble to him.

"Let's take ten," Bellamy declared and stopped. Clarke gave him a look like she'd murder him if he pitied her for even a second. "I'm beat," he added pointedly.

She leaned against a tree, absentmindedly wondering why they even brought her along, she felt like so much extra baggage, when Octavia hushed Bellamy and stood up. Carefully, cautiously, she crept forward, pointing towards something obscured by the brush a hundred yards aways. Bellamy followed her, gun poised.

It was a creature they had never seen before. Large, gigantic even, with a full barreled chest and four, sturdy legs. And antlers. Thick, wide, menacing. It was positively regal.

A gruff snort escaped its nostrils as it gnawed on a bush.

"A moose," Clarke whispered. Bellamy looked back at her. His face was filled with wonder, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. He licked his lips before training his gun on the animal, following its movements, lining up the shot. Clarke watched him. He always licked his lips like that before making some sort of decision. She knew it well.

She knew it too well.

The shot fired, clamored loudly, and the moose fell and bucked.

The rest of the day was spent staying put, but with no less hard work. The three of them tried to lift their prey and when that didn't work, they tried to drag it. Finally, they got to work on it right where it fell, Octavia barking orders as she made deliberate slices into its flesh. When the animal was skinned, Bellamy and Clarke examined it for butchering, trying to relate what they knew of hogs and applying it to a much larger animal. They came away with enough meat at least to not feel guilty, the thought of leaving an animal of that caliber untouched would have weighed heavily on their conscience, when their entire camp was scrounging for enough food to feed hundreds every day.

Clarke built the fire as Bellamy set up the tent and Octavia packed the meat and hide. By an hour after nightfall, they were roasting a leg.

Though riddled with exhaustion, Clarke didn't sleep. She was out of the tent at the first sign of dawn, tending to the dying fire.

"Three people, one hide won't exactly save us from winter," Bellamy's gruff, morning voice rumbled behind her. She found she knew that well too. It was more gravely than usual first thing in the morning, like he needed to warm it up. Since she was the first person he spoke to most mornings, she couldn't help but feel that voice was just hers.

"Good morning to you too," she said.

He side-eyed her a surly look as he sat down.

"I know," she said off his look. "We need to trade."

"With what goods? Scrap metal?" Bellamy bit out derisively.

Ok, he was in a mood. So was she. She decided not to follow up with an answer. It seemed this week was to be filled with prolonged, slightly weighty silences.

That is, it was until a flurry of movement and conspicuous twig snapping drew them to their feet, alert.

"O," Bellamy called, voice strained and tense.

Octavia froze, one foot out of the tent, and took in the scene. They were facing a troupe of Grounders, poised for attack. One had an axe raised, ready to throw.

"Bellamy…" Clarke said, letting it carry her worry.

She felt him tense beside her. "What do you want?" he called out.

"You," the leader said back. "Dead."

Octavia shifted nervously, looking to her brother.

"We're still under a truce, sanctioned between our people and Commander Lexa. You'd do well to remember that," Bellamy said.

"We don't answer to Commander Lexa," another called out.

"We didn't stray out of her territory," Octavia whispered. Bellamy darted his gaze to her and lowered his eyes to her feet. His gun was still in the tent. Octavia caught on and slowly crouched down to retrieve it. Clarke's heart beat in her ears. She saw one of the Grounders pull his bow taught and ready.

Octavia threw Bellamy his gun in a swift movement and within seconds he had it at his shoulder and aimed.

No one moved.

Out of the corner of her eye Clarke saw the leader nod to the man to his left, who was strangely weaponless. He took a stance as if ready to pounce. He looked scared.

To her left Bellamy licked his lips, his finger tightened on the trigger.

"Bellamy, no!" Clarke yelled out suddenly.

He froze.

"We can't kill them. That's what they want," Clarke whispered. "It's a mutiny."

"We can't take them all without a gun," he said back, under his breath.

"They can't kill us. They need us to kill one of them. To force a break in the truce. Trust me."

Bellamy nodded and swallowed hard before throwing his fun to the ground.

"Bell, what are you doing?" Octavia said.

"No killing," he said, meeting her eyes. "All right," he called to the Grounders and raised his hand up, the back of it facing them, and beckoned them with a cocky flick of come on.

The first Grounder lunged and Bellamy took off, taking on the biggest three, while Octavia flanked his left and Clarke his right, aiming to pick off the smaller guys at the edges.

Clarke wrestled her Grounder to the ground and struggled to get in a few good punches to his jaw. She suffered a blow to her abdomen and saw stars, which allowed for him to throw her on to her back and wrap his hands around her neck. Clarke clawed his face with her nails, which forced his grip on her to falter. She turned, and tried to to claw herself out from under him. She let out a yell when she felt him yank at her boot and drag her backwards. Her knuckles turned white trying to grip anything under the snow. She looked up to see Bellamy had knocked out two of his three, but was struggling to put down the last. Octavia had the upper hand, straddling her opponent and pulling back for a mean left hook.

Clarke kicked furiously and squirmed until she wriggled out of her boot entirely and stumbled as she got to her feet. He fisted a hand in the back of her coat. She wriggled out of it, left it in his hands, and ran to gain better ground.

"You can't kill me," she spat out as he advanced, a deathly cold hardness in his eyes.

"I think I can make an exception for the Incinerator," he growled and she winced at the nickname and at the way the sun caught the metal of the knife he was brandishing.

He lunged at her and she ducked, but he managed to shove her up against a tree, forearm flush against her throat and knife held to the side of her face. Her nails dug into his arms as she struggled to dislodge his hold on her. But it was strong, and soon she was struggling to keep her feet on the ground, his arm lifting and restricting her windpipe and her toes just grazing the ground. An idea fluttered in her mind as she gasped for air. She drew her right leg off the ground, kicked her foot off from the tree behind her and kneed him, hard, in the groin. The Grounder yelled out and stumbled back while she gulped buckets of air into her lungs, but his flailing hand slashed his knife along the underside of her upper arm as he fell and she cried out.

Clarke straddled him and grabbed his head in both hands, bashing it against a protruded root of the tree several times. Blood poured from her arm onto his face, and he spat it back at her before finally rolling his eyes back and laying still.

She hovered for a moment, swaying, before collapsing on the ground next to the unconscious Grounder. She felt lightheaded, her mouth dry. Her vision started to smear and let too much light in.

"Clarke!" She heard Bellamy somewhere off in the distance. In no time he was above her, blocking out the glaring sun, thank God. "Clarke," he repeated, and this time is was closer, clunkier, bogged down with thick concern.

"I'm fine," she bit out through clenched teeth. "I just-"

"You're not," he said, eyes flickering to wear her arm lay, pulsing out blood onto the dirty snow. His face paled. "There's too much blood. There's…" He stopped himself.

Clarke craned her neck to try and get a good look. Blood, dark and nearly black, was seeping out of her arm like a fluid stream. Panic spiked in her chest with a sharpness that she knew wouldn't help. She tried to push it back down.

"Pressure. To slow the bleeding," she said. He knelt over her, frozen. "Bellamy, now," she ground out.

The Grounder beside her stirred with a groan and Bellamy was over him, punching him out once more, and ripping his shirt. He crawled over to Clarke and lifted her arm, growing more cautious when she winced, and tied the cloth tightly around the wound. She couldn't help but let a pained whimper escape her lips when he tugged.

"Octavia," she said with sudden worry.

"She's tying the Grounders to trees so they can't follow us when they come to," he said, eyes trained to the blood soaking through the dark grey material at her arm.

"Bellamy, listen to me," Clarke said. She couldn't pry his eyes away. "Bellamy…"

He looked up.

"Once the bleeding slows, I'll need stitches," she said evenly. "There's a needle and thread in the med kit in my pack."

"I…I can't. O…" he stammered.

"You can do this," she said and her voice was full and warm, the way it only was when she spoke to Bellamy like this. "I trust you."

He drew in a heavy breath and exhaled a short, just as heavy one. She didn't know why she needed him to do this. Octavia was by far more qualified. Maybe it was the loss of blood, but Clarke's steady, detached coolness about her situation didn't stop her from calculating that if the bleeding didn't stop, she was as good as dead. And she didn't really want anyone but Bellamy looking down at her. She imagined seeing his face when her vision went dark. She wanted to.

She had lost time. Suddenly Bellamy was fumbling with the needle and thread, his hands trembling. Octavia stood over them.

"Let me," she said and he handed it over, eyes dark and troubled, the way they got when he was trying to internalize his inner turmoil. "Here." Octavia handed it back to him.

Clarke gave him her nod to go ahead, and he unwrapped the strip of Grounder shirt carefully, like a present. Bellamy examined her wound and frowned. "Can you lift your arm back? Like this?" he asked her and bent his arm at the elbow, his hand at the back of his head. "Can't get to it otherwise." Clarke tried it and cried out. "It's ok," Bellamy said. "It's ok." As if he were saying it to himself.

"Do it for me," Clarke said in between heavy breaths.

Bellamy maneuvered her arm and through her own cry of pain, she heard him curse under his breath.

"I have an idea. Let me," Octavia said and was kneeling at them. "Sit her up against you, Bell, and keep her arm like that. And I can get a good angle."

"Good idea," Clarke croaked through another sharp spike of pain, like pulling and stabbing and tearing all at once.

Bellamy hoisted her so that her back was settled against his chest and his thighs were on either side of her. He was sitting on his heels, and his cheek brushed the side of her forehead since he had to lean to one side to avoid being poked in the eye by the elbow of her bent arm. One of his arms hooked under her good one and the other snaked around her waist.

Octavia ripped the sleeve of her shirt open, from shoulder to wrist. Clarke felt the cold air and then first prick of the needle and hissed.

"Sorry," Octavia said, not sounding sorry at all.

Clarke knocked her head back and felt his chest against her scalp. She closed her eyes, readying herself for the thick line of stitches she was about to endure with no anesthetic.

"You'll be okay," he whispered. His breath was warm and his lips just touched the outer edge of her ear. "You'll be just fine."

Clarke found herself balling her free hand in a tight fist around his fingers and squeezing, hard, whenever Octavia punctured her skin anew.

He wrapped her arm in a fresh strip of cloth when they were finished, and leaving the Grounders securely tied to trees and glowering, they set off. Clarke was still lightheaded and so wobbly on her feet that she had to brace herself on Bellamy's arm. As a result, Octavia carried the heavy pack and Bellamy the other two. They were slow, and Octavia couldn't help but walk ahead.

After a few hours Clarke insisted that she walk on her own and carry her own pack. Bellamy fought her on it for a good thirty minutes until conceding with a grumble. He quietly insisted on walking at her embarrassingly slow pace though, and she didn't acknowledge it.

By late afternoon a side sweeping wind had picked up. It shoved her into a diagonal step and she pushed back at it, but it pricked and slapped at her face in retaliation. She was covered nearly head to toe in mud and blood, as her struggle with the Grounder had slushed snow and dirt together into a cold, sloppy mess. Her arm throbbed and her head whirled and as they got closer to camp she could barely stomach the thought. Of being there, of seeing her mother and being trapped. Of the small feeling she got when she was within those electrical fenced walls.

Maybe it was all of that overwhelming her, or maybe it was just her body and her mind giving out to exhaustion, but she had started to quietly sob. She usually had walls up for this kind of thing, but there was no fight left in her.

When her knees buckled she expected to hit the ground. She wanted to lie down anyway. Instead, She pitched forward into a strong arm that held her up.

"I got you," Bellamy said. He pulled her to him. She didn't feel like putting any energy into standing up, so she let him hold her full weight against him. She slumped against him and stifled a sob in the breast of his jacket, balled its collar in her fist.

"Clarke," he said. She wouldn't look up at him. "Hey, Princess…" he said softly.

"Let me down," she said, muffled. He didn't. "Let me go," she said more clearly.

Startled and confused he let her go and with relief she let herself collapse onto the ground. She didn't want to fight gravity anymore in standing upright. She wanted to curl up into a ball and hug the ground. The cold, grimy ground with its now dirty snow all over it.

He was down there with her. Fine. But she wasn't getting up. And that was that.

"Clarke," his voice had an edge to it, a slightly higher pitched whine that she hadn't heard before. "Clarke talk to me. What's wrong?" He was hoisting her up from where her cheek lay on the ground. She imagined her tears were finding ugly paths through the dirt on her face.

He brushed a tear away with his thumb. She imagined the smudge it left. "You're exhausted," he said. "Come on. I'll carry you home."

"No," she choked out. "Don't take me back there. Please I don't want to go back there. I can't…" She was crying again, choking on little sobs as she pleaded with him. All rationality had left her body and given way to an aching in her bones, and an endless cold save for the hot throbbing in her arm.

"What's going on?" Octavia's voice broke into her thoughts like smashing glass.

"I don't know," Bellamy said. "But we can't take her back like this."

Her face was buried in the crook of his arm. She fazed the sounds out. She didn't want to hear them.

When he snaked one arm under her knees and another around her back she tensed. "Shhh, it's okay," he said. "We're going to the bunker."

And he carried her away from Camp Jaha, to the west, as the sun set before them. He carried her a long way, or so it seemed. Her arms clutched around his neck. It pulled painfully on her injured one.

"I'm so tired," she whispered.

"I know," he said.

xxx

She only unhooked her arms from around Bellamy's neck when he was depositing her onto the supple mattress inside the bunker. Though, she didn't really willingly unhook her arms. She clung to him, and he pried her fingers apart with a careful gentleness and muttered something about going to rummage around to find light.

She just sat there, shoulders slumped, swaying slightly. Too tired to even lie down properly.

After a few minutes she heard a soft whistle and the dull pop of sucking oxygen that happens when flames burst into existence. He lit a few kerosene lanterns and placed them on various surfaces. A soft glow flickered across the walls and illuminated the space just enough that she could make out the soft curls of his hair.

She heard clamoring, clanking. A mutter she couldn't make out. She blinked, but it must have been a long blink, because when she opened her eyes again he was kneeling before her, untying her boot.

"There's a hot plate hooked up to a propane tank I found in the supply closet," he said. "I have an idea."

Clarke didn't say anything. She just watched as he carefully undid her laces and jostled her boot back and forth to get it off. And then repeated his work on the next one. Slowly, like they might break.

Then came her socks, his thumb sweeping down the top of her foot after them.

He lifted himself onto his knees, and suddenly his torso was in between her thighs. Clarke took the opportunity to rest her forehead on his shoulder. The weight of keeping it up was giving her a headache. He tugged at the shoulders of her jacket and peeled it off her limp arms. Then they were at the hem of her shirt, ripped and torn and bloody. He swept it up and she flinched when his knuckles grazed her bare skin.

"Come on, now," he said softly. "We've gotta get you cleaned up."

She relaxed once more, and sat up enough for him to pull her shirt up over her head and one arm, and then down and off her hurt arm. She was able to prop herself up if she put her weight on both of her palms, and so she watched, curiously, like the edges of the world were softened and fuzzy, as he flicked open the first button to her pants.

"Bellamy," she said and it was hoarse and scratchy. She realized she hadn't spoken since getting to the bunker.

"Trust me," he said, but it came out as more of a question.

She pressed her lips together. "Okay." And then came the next button, and the zipper after that. It took everything in her to press into her palms and lift herself up so he could wriggle her pants out from under her. And down her legs they went.

"Sleep now, Clarke," he said and guided her down onto the bed, pulling the blanket up and tucking it around her shoulders. "I'll be right back."

xxx

When she woke she was warm. Clarke barely remembered the last time she had felt truly warm, through and through. Her head felt more attached to her body and her vision was clearer, making out delicate details in the soft glow of the room. Bellamy had found a few candles, and lit those too.

She hoisted herself up, forgetting about her bad arm, and let out a hiss and a sharp Ah. She hastily pulled herself all the way up so that the blanket fell from her shoulders and she found herself in just her bra. Modest, white, dirty. Hot panic coursed through her and she pulled the blanket up to her neck to cover herself.

She heard the padding of feet on the concrete floor. "You're up," Bellamy said. He crossed into her line of vision and she had to work not to outwardly gape. He was wearing only his boxer-briefs. Dark grey, the standard ones the Ark issued. She had seen them before. But they looked best on him.

A canteen was in her face. She must not have noticed what with his chest and abs and the small start of a very chiseled V that disappeared into the elastic of his underwear distracting her.

"Where are your clothes?" she asked. "Where are my clothes?"

"I'm doing laundry," he said with a lopsided half smile and crouched down in front of her. "Drink," he ordered and shook the canteen. She drank ferociously, relishing in the flood of cold water quenching a thirst she hadn't realized was there.

"Laundry?" she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"The hot plate. Found a pot. Filled it with some snow. Presto, hot water," he said and lingered before he shot to his feet. "Hold on. Wait there," he said and scurried away.

Clarke shrugged her shoulders and let them flop. "Where else would I go?" she mumbled to herself.

He came back with a folded towel, little droplets of water falling to the floor from the corners. He sat down next to her on the bed.

"Let me see," he said, throwing a look to her arm. It was the opposite side from him, so she shifted to face him, pulling on leg up and bending it on the bed. The other one dangled off the edge.

He lifted her arm up with only the pads of his fingers to find her stitches on the underside and brought the damp towel to her skin. She sucked in a breath. It was warm, bordering on hot. She didn't remember the last time she'd felt hot water. The sensation was borderline blissful. Bellamy began to dab lightly, careful not to pull on any skin that could open her stitches. He worked with intent and purpose, focus trained solely on her arm. Clarke watched the top of his head with as much intent and purpose. He began to wipe softly at the blood and dirt caked into her bicep, and up to her shoulder, swiping down along her collarbone.

Clarke tried not to breathe. He was close enough to her chest to register the ragged, uneven breaths she was sure to produce if she did. So she held it for as long as she could, trying to will herself into a statue.

"There," he said when he was finished and pulled back to meet her eyes. His eyes were searching. Little, fluttery movements back and forth along her face. She almost asked him what was wrong when he flipped over the towel and raised it to her cheek. It was still warm, and she felt it seep into her skin and set off a chain reaction of heated cells, bouncing off one another and spreading until they flushed through her face and down her neck.

Bellamy dabbed at her brow, along her hairline, across her chin, like he was painting her. Soft, delicate, measured. He curled her hair behind her ears and swept the towel along the underside of her jaw, finding every smudge of dirt and blood that he could.

When he finished he dropped the sullied towel to the floor. It now held all of what had been burying her, suffocating her. In a literal sense of course, but she somehow felt lighter now, like he washed her of her burdens and her fears and her sadness. He allowed his hand to linger, fingers grazing into her hair and thumb sweeping back and forth along her cheek. It was so soft. Something jumped light in her chest.

"Thank you," she whispered, practically mouthed.

He pulled back his hand and she felt a chill, got colder. He looked away, suddenly bashful, shifted slightly. Like this was the the most intimate situation he'd ever found himself in. Well, her too. Here they sat, inches away, in their underwear. Lit by candlelight. Touching. Bathing.

She wanted to feel warm again.

She reached out a hand and let it graze along his shoulder. She felt him tense underneath her. Her fingers danced down his bicep. It twitched. She curled her hand around it. She loved his arms. They were so strong and so beautiful. Violent and safe. She traced the pad of her pointer finger along the vein that coursed through his inner arm, following it along the inside of his elbow, to his forearm, until she reached the pad of his palm. She scraped her nails lightly in his hand. He inhaled sharply.

She looked up and met his eyes, hooded and dark. His lips were parted, wanton. Clarke pulled herself onto her knees, lifting herself so that she could meet his gaze on the same level. And so that she could better scoot closer, knees just brushing the side of his thigh. And so that she could reach over and lay a hand on his chest. She traced the lines of his muscles like a map, wondering where they might lead and how they connected.

His breath was short, his heart pounding under her palm. Her knuckles brushed along the side of torso. He clenched his jaw and she saw the muscle in the side of his cheek tighten and jump. Clarke loved that muscle. Whenever he was tense, angry, unsure, he would swallow hard, clench his jaw and that muscle would pop.

She leaned forward, all too aware that her breasts pressed against his arm but she didn't care, she had to lean forward in order to get to that muscle. Her lips landed against his jaw, open, wanting to feel the movements of it, like the gears of a clock. Do it again. Sure enough, he swallowed. Hard. She smiled against his jaw when he did and scraped her teeth lightly along its sharp lines.

"Clarke," he rasped, grasping her wrist and pulling her hand back from his chest. Her nose nuzzled into the groove where his neck met his jaw, under his ear. Before she could take his earlobe between her teeth he turned and she was met with his eyes locked into her own, unable to escape. "What are you doing?" he said.

She noticed her rapidly beating heart and the heat rising from her chest and crawling up along her neck and into her cheeks. "I don't know. But I want to…" she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry again despite the water. "I don't want to be cold anymore. I want to be warm."

She wasn't sure what it meant exactly, but she knew that's how she felt. And it seemed to work for Bellamy, since within seconds he was hitching her leg across him and pulling her into his lap so she was straddling him.

"Okay, Princess," he said and traced his thumb up her spine. "I think I can do that."

He placed a feather light kiss on her shoulder. She shuddered, hands holding either side of his abdomen. He moved inward, peppering soft, delicate lips along her collarbone, up to her neck. Once there, he darted out his tongue. Then he suckled. Clarke gasped, loud and sharp, and felt a warm, wet heat pooling in her underwear. Her arms snaked around his neck, pulling him closer to her. She wanted him like this always, face buried in her neck, her hands in his hair.

So naturally he pulled back. She almost pouted, until she saw him…panting, licking his lips, slack-jawed.

"Kiss me," he said, somewhere in between a demand and a plea. She was scared, somehow, of this part. And as she searched deep within his eyes, she thought maybe he was too.

She felt his thumb at the underwire of her bra, toying with it, and then it grazed over the soft fabric covering her nipple and her mouth fell open, meeting his while she was mid gasp. It was sloppy, open mouthed, desperate. At first like dueling, because the feeling of his lips on hers was so electrifying she almost couldn't stand it. So they danced over each other, but didn't collapse, didn't fold. She kept pulling back and he kept chasing. It was just that she didn't know what would happen once she let herself go.

His lips sent tiny sparks down between her legs and she felt charged, in need of friction. She ground down into his lap, eliciting a guttural groan from him that might have just then become her new favorite sound. And so she collapsed. His lips crashed into hers, nearly bruising. His tongue slipped into her mouth and she melted into him, crushing every inch of her body that she could into his.

"Bellamy," she sighed into his lips.

His mmmm hummed into her lips and vibrated through her.

"I want you to touch me."

Bellamy stilled. Everything stilled save for the flickering of candlelight across his face. And then he pulled back the elastic of her underwear from her skin and dipped his hand inside. He swept through her soft curls before dipping lower and trailing a finger through her wet folds, ending up at her clit, where he applied delicate pressure.

A soft mewl escaped her lips. A moan when when he slid a finger inside. Her inner walls fluttered and contracted. He began to rub circles around her clit with his thumb, rocking his hand against her.

"More. Oh God, please more," she pleaded and he rewarded her with a second finger and curled up. She cried out and threw her head back as he began to thrust his fingers within her. His lips attached to her neck and between the pressure there and inside of her where his thumb flicked and circled and rubbed, it was all she could do not to explode. She felt sweet, sweet pressure everywhere, but especially building in a strange, tight knot low in her abdomen.

She was crying out consistently now, every time his fingers thrust back up and curled in to hit a spot she never knew existed. Her hips bucked into his hand for more, she just wanted more. Everything she felt was more frantic, more feverish. The pressure was building within her, like climbing up to a ledge. She climbed and climbed and climbed.

"Come for me, Clarke," Bellamy beckoned against her ear.

And then she fell over the ledge, as if into an ocean where waves racked through her body. She shuddered, felt herself clamp down around him, harsh and desperate, once, twice, three times. And then she was floating in that ocean, weightless and bobbing and tingling.

Bellamy retracted his hand from inside her underwear and placed a kiss against her jaw.

As she came to, like floating down to earth in a parachute, she became acutely aware of the hard bulge in Bellamy's boxer-briefs, and its pressing against her inner thigh. Clarke placed a palm over the fabric of his erection and rubbed soft circles, like he had.

"Clarke, you don't have to," he said, moved wild strands of hair from her face and stroked her temple.

"Let me," she whispered against his lips and wrapped her hand around his cock. It pulsed hot in her hand. She stroked her thumb across the tip before beginning a soft, rhythmic pump. Bellamy buried his face once more into her neck and against it strew muffled exclamations and deep moans, and maybe even her name. She absorbed them all against her skin, relishing in the way his voice carried and vibrated on her.

He captured her lips once more before he came, into her hand and partially on her stomach. For a moment, before she padded off for another warm towel, they remained intertwined, forehead against forehead, and just breathed. Together.

* * *

><p><em>p.s. adding a chapter 3 since I just seemed to have kept writing. Please review, it feeds the soul and fuels inspiration. Plus I love talking to you all! <em>


	3. Chapter 3

When the bunker latch swung open, their new world of white and dry cold had given way to damp and cool. The snow shriveled and tiny holes appeared where the once powdery blanket had collapsed in on itself, its moisture going first. The dry wrinkles of the last of the snow were ugly and brown. But it was easier to walk, and Bellamy couldn't get back to camp fast enough. All things considered, that was an extreme sentiment.

The humid atmosphere was easier going down his lungs, and maybe he would have felt like he could truly breathe deeply again if Clarke weren't there beside him. She made it sharp and stinging going down.

He noticed her sidelong glances throughout their walk, but if he tried to catch them they'd be straight ahead once again. She walked with her shoulders back and her head up, mouth settled in a stern line, its edges turned slightly down. She was back to normal and it had never looked so good on her. The trouble was that the current situation was anything but normal. An uneasy feeling, like sloshing back and forth, settled in his stomach.

They snuck back into camp during breakfast, and the tents were eerily empty.

"Clarke," he said when she turned to go her own way. It was the first time he had spoken since the bunker. "Whatever happens, with your mom…"

Her tongue poked between her lips and disappeared before she nodded. He didn't have to finish telling her that he would be there. She knew.

When she was out of sight he couldn't breathe any better. He figured he might have to get used to the feeling. Truth was he didn't mind too much.

"Where have you been?" A forceful, hushed voice caught up behind him. Octavia grabbed his sleeve and jerked him towards her.

"It's a long story," Bellamy said, clenching his jaw at the memory.

"Well is she okay? What the hell happened?"

Bellamy hesitated. Octavia raised an eyebrow, impatient. "I have no idea," he said finally.

"Bellamy," Octavia said in warning. Maybe he'd been looking off into the distance, too intently trying to will himself back to the bunker. She could sense his imbalance.

"Don't worry, O. We're still on." He couldn't keep eye contact.

She poked his chest. "Promise?"

He swallowed. "I'm worried about her," he said. He thought of Clarke. Clarke alone. Lost. Trapped.

She shoved him slightly then. Her tiny frame was curiously strong and his weaker foot stepped back to steady himself.

"Don't you dare, Bell. You know it can never work if she comes with us. You said it yourself." Octavia's face was contorted in distress, her eyes squinted small, like she always did before she was about to cry.

And he had. Bellamy looked to the sky. The sun wasn't hazy and dull today, but bright and yellow. It burned his eyes. He had promised his sister, among several others. They were counting on him. But now there was a Clarke shaped cloud over the entire thing and he felt the familiar weight of guilt and regret that had travelled with him in his bones for so long.

xxx

How low she had been. So low, in the literal dirt, to the point that she hadn't recognized herself. But now…now she had new clarity and the damp, cool air in her lungs. She could breathe deeper and fuller. She looked up and squinted. The sun was bright and rich.

Still Clarke couldn't bury the fact that it wasn't the thawing weather that brought her renewed life. But the determination she was armed with when she approached Marcus Kane was all that mattered.

"I have some information you're going to want to hear," she said, slipping onto the bench across from him at breakfast.

Kane stopped mid-chew, skeptical, until he seemed satisfied enough at her unfaltering stare that he glared at the others at his table until they understood to find somewhere else to be.

"And how is that so when camp policy is to stay on grounds at all times?" he said.

"Laundry duty seems to be an exception," she answered dryly.

Kane sniffed, maybe from the cold, maybe because everyone knew about laundry duty. "So what do you have to say for yourself? You understand you will be subject to arrest if your information was gathered in violation of the law."

Clarke leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You're not gonna arrest me, Kane." She let him continue his stare down for just long enough that he grew uncomfortable and he flicked his wrist, dropping his spoon into his bowl. The corner of her lips twitched up. "You're going to want to send a scouting party twenty kilometers northwest. I'll give you a map. They'll find one of two things. Either six grounders tied to trees, very pissed off with the very real chance that they'll be frozen to death. Or you'll find the evidence of a struggle, a moose carcas, and discarded rope. That would mean they got away."

Kane leaned back and crossed his arms. "And?"

"They surrounded us-"

"Us?"

Clarke narrowed her eyes at him in warning before continuing. "They were ready to send a rookie charging without a weapon. Their leader said he didn't answer to Commander Lexa. The plan was to sacrifice one of them at our hand so they could force the breakdown of our truce and blame it on us."

Kane leaned forward then, his hard eyes and pulled jaw falling at the intrigue. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," Clarke said, letting herself open up enough for him to find her sincerity and show him her trust. "Now," she continued when she was sure he had registered it. "I need something from you."

By lunch she had effectively avoided being arrested, somehow gained leverage in her ongoing battle of wills with her mother, and negotiated the first stages of her plan. The morning had been wrought with conflict and difficult maneuvering, and her back was riddled with twisted knots. Her arm ignited as if on fire anytime she moved it. Keeping it limp and flush against her side, she made her way to a small, tucked away room located in the center of the Ark.

When she reached the pharmacy she smelled grass and the particular aroma that fresh, loose soil emitted, like something mossy and woody. It was warmer in there, too. His door was slightly ajar and she pushed it open, surprised to find him quietly conversing with Bellamy among the terrariums of plants and herbs. Heads bent, soft murmurs.

"Monty…" Clarke said, questioning in her voice. The two looked back and pulled apart, as if caught in some secret. "Am I interrupting?" Her eyes darted to Bellamy, who looked away.

"Clarke! No, no. Not at all," Monty said hastily. "What uh…what can I get for you?"

"Well," she said and winced as she lifted her arm, having to prop it up on the nearby table in order to hold it up. Bellamy had found her a new shirt in the bunker, one with loose, long sleeves. She rolled it up to reveal the gash in her arm and the dark slew of stitches protruding from it.

"Holy crap," Monty said. Bellamy's eyes widened in silent alarm. He jutted forward, but she glared at him to stand down.

It looked bad.

"Got anything for me?" Clarke said. "Something with antibiotic properties. Maybe a coagulant."

Monty crossed the small, narrow room and began to examine his plants.

"It hasn't been disinfected, either," Bellamy said. He was leaning against the same high table as Clarke, arms crossed and a scowl darkening his features.

Monty had to shuffle around her to get to his moonshine, but Clarke didn't budge an inch, which forced him to clunk and clamor awkwardly. She was staring at Bellamy, who had begun to stare back. Their eyes hardened and narrowed and brows furrowed and she didn't know why, but she was mad. She was mad at his scowl and she was mad that she didn't know what it was about.

Monty finally came up for air. "Ok. Here's everything. I'll write down directions. But Clarke, you should really go to your mom for something like this."

"Not an option," she said simply and waited for him to prescribe her her things as Bellamy brushed by them in a huff and left without a word.

xxx

The next day, after a restless night-he had shifted from side to side but every time it felt like his ribs were so confining they might crush him-Bellamy pulled himself out of bed at dawn and to their morning spot. Most of the snow was gone now, replaced by cold, sticky mud. And unlike yesterday, when the moist coolness was welcome and inviting, the wet air made the cold stick to his bones and keep him freezing from the inside out.

As he walked, boots mushing into the mud and hands deep in his pockets, he felt the same painful feeling in his chest that he'd felt all night. Like something might leap out of his chest but when it tried, it smacked right against his ribs with a thud. He grew closer and the feeling grew worse with each step he took towards her.

Her hair was always the first thing he latched onto when he saw her. He wanted to comb his fingers through it again. He wanted her weight on his thighs again. He wanted her hands hot on his bare flesh again, lighting him up.

And just then something snapped in him and he didn't care anymore, about repercussions or fallout or increased degree of difficulty. He had to tell her. And he had to beg her to come with him. God, how could he had ever possibly thought he could do it on his own? There was no vision of his life on Earth that he didn't picture Clarke.

Perfect, he thought, when the first peek of the sun revealed itself as a hazy lavender. Her favorite.

But Clarke never showed.

He sat, tense and waiting, fingers knocking atop his knee, until the haze dissipated and the the sun just hung there in the sky. Finally he stood up and walked away.

During breakfast he caught a glimpse of her straw yellow hair far across the camp's main clearing, wavy and clear against all of the brown and grey of the world. He looked on wistfully, until his jaw clamped down so hard that the muscles in his neck tweaked. She was standing with Jaha and Kane, deep in conversation. Something was very off. Bellamy sniffed in a breath and turned away.

His hunting privileges hadn't been rescinded just yet, so he took off for the rest of the day in solitary brooding. Not even the squirrels were out. There was only a squawking crow, large and ugly, that followed him as he walked. Maybe he was just walking in circles anyway.

"Where have you been?" Her voice, like brightness, streamed into his head and filled it like blinding. The sun was low and orange at his return. A glow, like the candles in the bunker and the fire at first snowfall dusted her skin but didn't flicker. It just illuminated.

"Out," he said, hard and clipped.

"Well I need to talk to you," she said.

He crossed his arms, squared off his stance. "I'm listening."

"I sent Kane and his men to retrieve the Grounders tied to the trees. They just came back. Two were frozen to death but we have the other four." Clarke paused, waiting to read his reaction. When his expression didn't change she continued, creases appearing between her brows. "My mom is heading out tomorrow for her weekly healing training and you and I are going with to request an audience with Lexa."

"Should be fun," he said sarcastically. "When do we head out?"

Clarke bit her bottom lip as if to quell a smile from spreading across her lips. "It gets better," she said. "I realized we have leverage. Lexa won't talk to anyone but me. And so I explained to Jaha and Kane that if they wanted me to bring the intel about an insurrection in her ranks to her then they're just going to have to consider giving us positions on the Council."

Her face was awash in the setting sun, filled with hope and anticipation. It was enough to make him unwind himself from the hardness, like stone, he had willed himself into.

"You did that?"

"Our people account for nearly a fifth of Camp Jaha and yet they have no representation. They didn't come down here with them, they came down here with us. And we have experience and perspective that the Council needs. They ate it up."

Bellamy couldn't shake the nagging pull in his chest. He pictured the future he didn't want. "So we join the Council. And then what?"

"What do you mean?" Clarke asked, stepping back at his chilly reception to her news.

"They're still going to arrest anyone at the first sign of dissent. They'll still float-"

"Float how? Hanging someone from a tree is a hell of a lot more difficult to swallow than ejecting someone into space," she said, agitated.

"Sure, tell that to the thousands of years of public hangings. Better yet, to the public beheadings and burnings," he bit back.

Clarke scoffed, incredulous. She took him in, sized him up for a long moment until his neck burned with heat at his collar. "We can make a difference if we're on that council," she said finally.

"They'll find a way, Clarke. One way or another. It's all they've ever known." He said, conciliatory like he was sorry and trying to let her down easy.

But she was incensed, looking up at him, eyes blazing. "And what else do you suggest we do, Bellamy?"

All he could do was watch as the sun set on her face and keep silent with his secrets.

xxx

Bellamy hung back with the guard that accompanied Abby to the Grounder camp each week and Clarke couldn't help but notice the way the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her thoughts ricocheted back and forth against her skull. Thoughts of Bellamy, trying to make sense of it all. Trying to make sense of him. She needed to focus and she couldn't. Bellamy's hardened face, not letting her in. Bellamy's lips on her skin. Bellamy's terse responses. Bellamy's fingers digging into her hips.

She squeezed her mom's hand when they reached camp, parting ways towards infirmary and headquarters respectively. Bellamy followed in tow, closer now, and she relaxed at the safety she felt with him looming near. All at once things were no longer tense or uncomfortable and they were once again in sync. Clarke allowed her fingernails to ease up from digging into her palm.

A guard demanded the reason for her presence and she requested an audience with Commander Lexa. She had important information to share.

"Alone," the guard said.

"No," Clarke replied. "He stays. For my protection. Unless the Commander prefers to have Indra step outside."

Ten minutes later they had been shuffled into an empty tent and left there, save for the two guards standing right outside.

"Well that worked out well," Bellamy said, sitting down heavily on a creaky bench.

"Shut up," Clarke said, but her heart wasn't fully in it. She plopped down too and leaned back against the sturdy wall made of hide. She crossed her arms, staring straight ahead.

Bellamy's elbows ended up on his knees, gaze determined to find something interesting in the dirt floor. Minutes passed. Double digit minutes.

"So," Bellamy broke the silence. "We gonna talk about it?"

Her ribs hurt. She knew he didn't mean the Council or even the mutiny. "No…maybe. I don't know."

"Clarke. If you regret it, it's okay. It wasn't smart…I wasn't smart and I shouldn't have…"

"Shouldn't have what?" she asked, holding her breath.

Shoulders still hunched over, he turned to look up at her. "You were hurt. Exhausted."

"And you what? Wished you'd been the decent guy and walked away?" She wasn't able to hide the bitter judgment in her voice.

He opened his lips as if to answer her, but if there were words to say he let them die, and his lips just hung there, full and parted and unsure.

"You don't seem to have a problem not being decent with anyone else," she said, jaw set tight and cold.

Clarke could see in his tight swallow, and subsequent jumping of the muscle in his cheek that she loved so much, that he knew she meant Raven. He looked hurt, but she had frozen over and no amount of troubled, dark brown eyes could pierce through her ice. Somewhere underneath she knew somehow that he did. Have a problem with it, that is. She remembered what Raven had told her. He always wished to be better, to be good. He always feared the destruction that could so easily come from his own hands, his own actions. But that knowledge was hidden somewhere rational and locked away because right now all she could think about was why her. Why regret touching Clarke, the princess, for fear of wanting, using, needing. Why couldn't she inspire passion and desire instead of regret and shame.

She was untouchable. Until she wasn't. And then she should have remained untouchable.

"Clarke I…" he said finally, searching for the words. "I don't know what to say. I don't know how to…

"You're the one who wanted to talk about it," she snapped. "And you're right. I do regret it. So are we done? Can we move on to more important things?"

Bellamy looked like something broke in him. Like she has just reached in and snapped his bones in half. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah, ok." He looked back down to the dirt.

She felt like she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe because if she did she'd either scream or cry. So she sucked in a breath and winced as it pierced through her.

Clarke channeled her bitter rejection into cutting through the skepticism and politics that were ceaselessly present in any conversation had with Lexa and Indra. She entertained none of it, and sliced through their objections and reservations like butter until she was satisfied and promptly turned on her heel and began walking back to camp, not caring who followed her. Of course he did, though.

After that, his physical presence in her life began to quietly wane. She no longer spent her days with him, but he showed to their preliminary council meetings and and always took her side. They discussed their politics afterwards or at dinner, but his heart was never in it and she cut them shorter and shorter. She didn't wake up at dawn anymore. She missed the sunrises and wondered if he still showed.

She heard from Jasper that Bellamy had gotten himself on firewood duty. Winter had returned in full force, and the camp was burning twelve fires twenty-four hours a day. They couldn't chop trees down fast enough, especially since the snow made it hard to keep dry. She imagined him spending his days out there, swinging an axe while she spent hers inside the walls of the infirmary and tried to pretend she didn't know what constant heavyheartedness felt like.

One day, late into winter, she stopped seeing him at all. Normally she caught glimpses of him hauling his logs to the shed, or in line for breakfast before heading out for the day. And then there was just…nothing. Her eyes searched for him in every new place she went, scanned the crowd, reworked.

She caught Octavia stuffing her pack with clothes and hauling it over her shoulder.

"Not now, Clarke."

"Octavia, please. I know something is up," Clarke said, persistence in her voice.

"I'm sure he'll back in a few days. Look, Lincoln is waiting."

Octavia's eyes flicked back and forth slightly and she shifted on her feet. Clarke honed in on the signs, circled like a hawk. Octavia was never shifty, never nervous. Her eyes narrowed. "I'll find out, you know."

"I know," Octavia said. "Just not from me."

Before dinner she wandered into Raven's work station, weary and dragging her feet. Raven had a screwdriver deep in-between the metal guts of some contraption that looked like a piece of junk.

"Rough day?" Raven glanced over at Clarke when she sat heavily on a work stool, hands dangling limply between her thighs.

"Why does it feel like all of a sudden everyone is avoiding me like the plague?" Clarke said within a long, exasperated sigh.

"If it feels like it then they probably are," Raven said flatly.

"You're so good at pep talks," Clarke said, teasing sarcasm.

"Is that what you need? Pepping?"

Clarke crinkled her nose in brief thought. "No. I need to figure out what Bellamy's up to."

Raven shrugged, still twisting her screwdriver. "I know."

"You're in on it, too?" Clarke's voice raised, pulling tight so it was strained and higher pitched than normal.

"Hell no. They left me out of it, like you. I just figured it out a while ago." Clarke looked at her, expectant and impatient. Raven stopped her tinkering and turned, hand on her hip. "Hold on. You're gonna need a drink for this."

Raven brought wire cutters and they broke into Monty's pharmacy and sat on the ground, back to the metal wall and knees up in front of them, passing a bottle back and forth.

"Before I tell you I wanna know two things," Raven said and took a swig. "One. How chummy are you with the Council these days?"

She was gravely serious, waiting for Clarke's response. "Not at all. All I did was take your advice. I found a less drastic measure to take."

Raven puckered her bottom lip up so that her chin scrunched a little. "Two. Is there more to you and Bellamy?"

Clarke reached for the bottle in Raven's hand, took a large swallow and let it burn all the way down before bracing herself to answer. "There was. But he regretted it."

"No he didn't," Raven said quietly.

They exchanged the bottle back and forth in silence for a few minutes.

"Why?" Clarke finally said.

Raven hesitated, had to work up to saying it. "Because he's leaving."

xxx

The wood in front of him snapped and splintered under his axe. Others were calling it quits for the day and heading for camp, but they knew Bellamy liked to work right up until the last gleam of light and then carry his day's work back to camp in the dark. Sure, they figured he was getting through his last two logs by his station. It was good that they figured that.

In actuality, once everyone was gone, Miller would meet him and they would carry his remaining logs a few miles east. This went on for weeks, and they routinely missed dinner. Breakfast too, since the only time they could work was from dawn until shifts started and during lunch. By the time the siphoned logs were dropped at their chosen site they were heading back to camp well after dinner. Monroe snuck them rations to their tents.

Weeks of this had passed, but today was the day. The prototype was ready, and he'd be damned if he were going to sleep within the confines of Camp Jaha that night. It was late in winter, and soon to be spring he thought. But there was a good foot of snow on the ground, no end in sight.

Bellamy looked up, searching for an early moon in the afternoon sky, but it had grown light grey and strangely bright.

An hour into chopping his own wood for the hearth, it had begun to snow. It was different this time than the others, like a swarm of white, dense and foggy. It was growing difficult to see, and winds gusted strong and mean. Miller should be there soon with the rabbits that Monroe swiped from the kitchen that morning. If they could test living conditions for the next month or so, while building more, then they'd be able to send for the others by the time the last snow fell.

He squinted, making out a dark, shapeless figure approaching through the white haze of snow. It wasn't Miller.

"Clarke?"

As she grew closer he could make out her features. She carried two rabbits by their ears in her left hand and her face was nearly blank, save for the corners of her lips that were turned down and the indent in her chin. She wasn't wearing her jacket let alone her fur and she stood, ghostly and ominous before him, in just the shirt he had found for her.

"Jesus, Clarke," he said when she was just feet in front of him. He made to move towards her but she stepped back.

"Don't," she said. Her voice was dark.

"How'd you find me?"

"Punched Miller in the face," she said and tossed the rabbits at his feet. "He said to give you those, by the way."

He looked down into the pearly black eyes of the dead animals, then back up to Clarke. "Let me explain." Cautious, measured. His ears were screaming and his throat threatened to collapse on itself, but he had no idea what was happening behind her eyes. It scared the hell out of him.

"How many?" When he didn't answer right away she repeated herself. "How many, Bellamy?"

"Six," he said.

"Who?" she pressed on, relentless.

"Miller. Monty. Monroe. Harper. Octavia. For now. And Lincoln."

"For now?" she scoffed. "So what are you just biding your time before you can take all of our people with you? And I'm just supposed to what? Stay put while I'm left behind?"

"It's not like that," he said, pleading in his voice.

"Then what's it like, Bellamy? Enlighten me." Her voice raised, close to yelling. A bout of wind whipped her hair around her face.

"Look, who knows if we'll even survive out here. It's just an experiment. That's as far as it goes. I can't live another day in that camp."

"We're getting somewhere. The Council-"

Bellamy rose his voice to meet hers then, frustrated and battling against the rising winds. "Not we. You, Clarke. You did that. You never asked me."

"And you never asked me," she yelled back. "All you had to do was ask." Her voice faltered then and broke all over the last word. Her hardened features had broken with it and he now faced all of her hurt. Hurt that he had caused. Hurt that hit him square in the gut.

"It's not that simple," he said hoarsely.

"It is!" She was crying now and she angrily wiped at her tears.

She turned to go and he leapt forward, grabbing her good arm.

"Let go of me," she ground out between clenched teeth.

"Clarke, you don't even have a coat on and you can barely see a foot in front of you. You're not going back until the storm passes."

"I don't care," she said and wrenched her arm, hard, to try and rid herself of his grasp.

"Too bad," he said and held his grip, feeling his fingers press indents into her skin. "Now either you can turn around and get in that cabin or I can throw you over my shoulder and carry you in there myself. Your choice, Princess."

He made sure to pick up the rabbits, lightly coated with snow, once she turned around and stalked furiously into his prototype. His very own log cabin.

It was a square, small room with a packed dirt floor and a thatched roof. To the right of the door, tucked in the corner and away from the cold draft of the entrance was a pile of hides, pelts, and furs, stacked to make a bed. Directly across and built into the opposite wall was a hearth, where a fire could burn and the smoke funnel up and out through a vent in the roof. To the left of the door was a humble table, a wash basin and a canteen resting on top of it. It was pieced together with spare scrap metal from camp.

Clarke tucked herself into the far corner of the furs, where the two walls met, while Bellamy began to build a fire. He handed her a tin of water and she looked down into it in that way she did. He skinned and gutted the rabbits, readying them for the spit, and only when they were roasting did he allow himself to settle down a few feet from her.

The warmth of the fire slowly filled the room and he let the crackle and pop of the wood be the only sound save for the whistling wind outside.

"I thought you were with me," she said finally, nearly under her breath. Her knees were up against her chest and she hugged them to her.

"I'm so sorry," he said. It wasn't enough. But he meant it truly and fully. If he could pour all of his regret into that one word until it burst he would. "I couldn't ask you to leave with me. It felt selfish and stupid and…" his voice fell to a whisper. "I could never ask."

"You didn't have to. You could have told me."

"I wanted to," he said, with sudden urgency. "So many times. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to beg you to come with me and tell you I couldn't go it alone. I just…There's so much there for you, Clarke. And they don't know it but they need you."

"You didn't give me a choice." she ground each word into him. "What about what I need, Bellamy?"

He turned his body to face her then, eyes perfectly round, worried and scared. "What do you need?"

"You're an idiot," she said but it wasn't accusatory. It was almost wistful. Pitying. And then she flung to her knees in front of him and grasped his face in her hands so she was looking down into his soul. And she kissed him desperately.

Open mouthed. Tongues hungry. Heavy breaths. She told him all the need and hurt she couldn't figure out how to convey. He matched her and kissed with all of his regret and sorrow.

"Clarke," he managed to get out between breaths. Her hands were in his hair, tangled up in it. His snaked around her hips. She pulled back and stilled, breath heavy and hair falling down around her and shielding him from the rest of the world. "Of all the mistakes I've made-and there've been a lot-this was the biggest. Okay?"

Her lips hung parted and swollen, her eyes shiny and sparkly with tears. She nodded and a tear dislodged and fell onto her cheek.

Bellamy pulled her close and buried his face into her chest, resting his cheek along the hard plate of her sternum. He felt a salty sting in his eyes and a wave swelling in his throat.

"Please," he choked out. "Don't ask me to stay."

"I won't," she said. Her hands still played in his hair. Exploring. Combing. Twirling. "Because I'm coming with you."

He pulled back to look at her, forehead twisted in a wordless question, oceans of hope in his eyes.

"I am always with you, Bellamy."

He wanted to worship her then. He wanted to awash himself in her forgiveness and her power. He wanted to show her how much he needed her too. So he raked his lips over her skin, trailing from her chest to where her collarbone met in the center at the base of her neck. Clarke threw her head back, clawed at the back of his shirt, pulled it up and yanked it off. His hair fell in his eyes, and she somehow looked more beautiful obscured, lifting her arms up as he swept her shirt from her body.

This wasn't like the last time. There was no reveling a tender spot on her shoulder or exploring the grooves of her skin with his tongue. This was frantic and frenetic. It was electric need and blazing desire.

He unhooked her bra with one hand and peeled it away from her breasts with his teeth. A sharp gasp escaped her when his lips closed over a nipple and his tongue swirled. She tugged at a fistful of his hair.

Soon he was toppling them over and laying her down on her back, their arms tangling as he tried to yank down her pants and she fumbled with his belt. He got to hers first and made his way back up to her by trailing wet, open-mouthed kisses at her ankles, along her calves, and up her inner thighs.

She tensed when he pulled her underwear off and instead of settling on top of her, he hooked his arms under her thighs and settled his head in between them. Bellamy realized Clarke, at seventeen and leader of the free world (as far as he was concerned), might only have had the most rudimentary of sexual experiences thus far.

"Hey," he said. She lifted herself onto her elbows, the ends of her hair grazing against her skin. Athena, he thought. War and wisdom. "Trust me?" he said and placed a chaste kiss on the inside of her knee.

Clarke bit her bottom lip and worried it for a few seconds before nodding. "Yeah," she whispered.

His nose grazed the light curls of her mound, soft and wild and tangled, before he dipped lower and parted her folds with a long stroke of his tongue. Her lips ejected a delicate moan, wisping like a streak of smoke to his ears. Encouraged, he lapped at her entrance. She tasted like Earth. Like the woods and ferns and fog and musk.

Then his tongue was on her clit, flicking and swirling, teasing and taunting. Her next moan ripped from her throat, primal and guttural. Her hips bucked up. It sent tiny pricks of pleasure all the way down his body so that his cock strained against his pants.

Athena. Courage and law and strength and art and inspiration. He felt her tense, her back arch. He pulled himself away, needing a bird's eye view of her naked body. Thin but not chiseled. All soft curves around the edges. Blue eyes that glinted even in the absence of any light. Straw blond hair cascading in tiny waves along her shoulders. Lips parted and full. Breasts heaving and supple. She was positively mythic.

"Bellamy," she said and his gaze, which had gotten lost somewhere along the round of her right hip, snapped up. "Take off your pants."

He did as told, shedding them and crawling back to her like a large, prowling cat. Her hands snaked around his biceps as they held his weight by her shoulders and he kissed her with a hard fusion of lips, as if soldering them together.

When he guided himself to her entrance, slick and hot and wanting, she pulled her lips away.

"Do you regret it?" she asked, meek and fragile. The bunker, he knew she meant.

He stroked her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. "I've never regretted anything less in my life."

And he eased the head of his cock into her. She let out a high-pitched ah. Dug her nails into his arms when he pushed in further. He felt her inner walls stretching to accommodate him, allowing him little give.

"God, Clarke. You're so tight," he whispered in her ear and he felt a rush of heat from her pulse around his cock. "You feel so good around me." She mewled at his encouragement and her thighs fell wider. He waited, still and motionless within her, allowing time to adjust and fit together. When he felt her relax and her nails retract he jutted his hips in a soft, upward sweep.

She gasped, one of those gasps that starts heavy and full in the chest, and her nails were back in his arms. He rocked against her a few more times, creating a delicious rhythm that she seemed mad he broke when he pulled nearly all the way out of her before thrusting back in. She cried out, eyes snapping open, lips falling apart in an eternal gasp. And again when he pulled back and thrust into her a second time. And a third. And a fourth.

"More," she strangled out in between thrusts.

"More?" he said, goading her with amusement behind his hot, heavy breaths. She just nodded. The loose strand of hair that always framed her face was matted and damp against her temple.

"Tell me," he said hoarsely. But she didn't know how. His lips found themselves hot and heavy at her ear. "Faster?"

"Faster," she gasped.

He picked up the pace.

"Deeper?"

"Deeper," she echoed.

He hooked her right let under his arm and pushed it up and back.

"Oh, God," she cried and bucked her hips up to meet his thrust.

It was his turn to moan, rough and harsh. "Harder?"

"Harder."

His free arm found hers and pinned it back behind her head. He twisted his fingers around hers before releasing more power into the snap of his hips, building building and building until he was fucking her good and proper. Rough. Wild. Untamed.

Coherency seemed to have been lost on her and incantations of yes yes yesses fell from her lips and captured him in rapture. His lips hovered over hers, both hanging open and wide to allow for the ecstasy escaping from deep inside their chests.

"Kiss me," she demanded, urged, begged. When he obliged she moaned and shuddered, tensing as her muscles clenched around him, pumping and pulling out of him all that he had. Something like lightning must have shot through her, and she whimpered before biting down on his lower lip and tugging.

With one more desperate thrust, with everything he had, and everything he could give her, he came inside of her and collapsed against her chest, breathing hard and ragged. Her heartbeat underneath him lulled him into a languid half-sleep as she traced small patterns against his temple.

xxx

Clarke woke with a jolt and sat straight up, having heard a retched howl, like a dying wolf. Her heart thumped in her throat. There it was again.

Suddenly Bellamy was next to her, sitting up, all mussed hair and bare chest. "It's just the wind." His voice, groggy and jagged, vibrated against her skin. He kissed her shoulder. "You hungry?"

"Famished," she said, a smile fluttering across her lips.

She reveled in all the ways he was a man. She had only ever been with boys, and not that many. But Bellamy, with his lean, hard muscles and his deep voice and his big hands, was all man. Not just in physique, but in the way he held her, the way he looked at her, the way he had fucked her. Even in the way he carried himself, walking naked across the tiny room and commanding it. She watched the dimples in his backside flex and flutter as he tended to the fire. He returned to her with two rabbits on skewers.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty-three. Why"?

"Hmm, no reason," she cooed teasingly. "I just realized I don't know anything about you."

His grin broke out onto his face like sunshine suddenly piercing through the clouds.

Later, deep into the night and after the rabbits and the planning and the talking, Clarke traced lazy circles on his chest with her fingertip. Under a distinctly soft fur. Facing each other. Grazing and gazing languidly.

Clarke explored the flush of freckles that danced across his nose and dusted his cheeks. She wanted to memorize their patterns like constellations in the night sky.

"Everything's about to change," she said.

"It is."

Languid touches turned into languid kisses, slow and sleepy and deep. Until, like a soft blush, new heat swept under her skin and lit up her bones from within like the embers of the firewood just a few feet away.

Clarke felt his hardened erection poke against her thigh and she wanted him. Badly. All over again.

"I've never been on top," she whispered into his lips.

"Oh, Princess. That…" he said and paused to hike her leg over his hips and hoist her up so that she was straddling atop him. "…is where you belong."

She eased herself down onto his shaft, taking him in slowly and letting herself grow accustomed to him inside of her. The few times she had slept with others she hadn't wanted to explain her relative inexperience and had swallowed the initial pain she had felt before the pleasure. But Bellamy had known intuitively. And that thought seemed to keep with her as she rode him-rode them both-into oblivion once again.

When she was close his thumb found her clit and rubbed fast circles until she saw all of the speckled constellations she memorized etched bright and light behind her eyes. She leaned over to kiss him, messy and rough, with teeth, as he thrust up into her. A fresh, bright wave of pleasure crashed over her and she unraveled all over again. He kept going. He wasn't done yet. And it was all she could do to hold on for dear life, through waves that she thought would never stop coming.

After, her body was sated, muscles loose and heavy and mushy. She had never felt so sleepily content before. Her thoughts became fluid and freeform, as fields of yellow flowers eased seamlessly into sandy beaches and then into dark caves. Pictures she drew on the walls of her prison cell.

"Bellamy," she whispered hazily, wrapped around his torso.

He was playing with a strand of her hair, curling it around his fingers and letting it go before starting all over again. "Yeah?"

"I want to see the ocean."

In a half remembered dream she had felt it. She was filled with it, the ocean, and she had never even seen it. She had waves inside of her and hurricanes and calm, still days.

"Anything," he said before they both drifted from the shore and into sleep.

The next time they met at dawn in their own little corner of Camp Jaha and readied themselves for the day's expedition out into the world, they had packed for a long journey. Stockpiled food had been siphoned and hidden at the cabin for a week. A med kit. A gun and extra bullets. Raven even found them a lighter.

There would be no hiding her absence this time around, and she left a note with Raven to deliver to her mother when they were two days out and hysteria began to rise. She would deal with the fallout when they returned.

They set out on a warmer day than most. One where the birds came out to play as the sun battered down into the snow and the trees stood still and at peace. The winter warmth followed them the first few days as they traveled south, running along the river.

It grew cold again, they lost the river, and they wasted all of Monty's moonshine on a night of cold winds and hot, drunken sex that would have steamed windows if the tent had had any. If there was any glass at all on Earth. They only covered ten miles the next day instead of their usual twenty.

Eventually the snow began to thin, giving way to brown earth and bare trees. It was barren and grey from dirt to sky. And by midday of the eleventh day, just as Clarke began to worry that she had made the wrong call and bitter tears threatened to cloud her vision, something in the air changed.

"You smell that?" Bellamy asked warily.

"Yeah," Clarke said, noting the change in terrain. Damper, flatter, more barren.

It stung. Not in an entirely unpleasant way. But the air was stinging with something that wafted and overwhelmed the nostrils and seeped into the back of the throat. As if the air could be tasted. It smelled like salt and something more pungent. Of musk, but sharper and more metallic.

"What is it?" he said.

Clarke closed her eyes, breathed it in, let it fill her lungs and puff out her ribs. She liked it, but she didn't know why.

Her eyes snapped open. She knew.

"The ocean."

And she was off, dropping her pack where she stood and barreling up the hill.

"Clarke," Bellamy called after her, but she had reached the top of the hill and over and stopped still in her tracks. There it was. A dull beige landscape before it-that must be sand-was covered with driftwood and stringy messes of shiny plants and shells. Beyond it was a grey vastness, stretching out and over in both directions until it curved and disappeared over the horizon to go somewhere new. The swell and subsequent crashing of waves filled her ears, reverberated with a full thunder that she hadn't expected. Frothy, white caps decorated the tips of the choppy waves.

The ocean.

She felt it. She felt the whole thing in her heart. Choppy and grey and beautiful. And Bellamy was next to her. It had begun to rain. Cold, invisible drops that were sharp when they landed on her cheek. She took his hand in hers and lay her head on his shoulder.

They looked on.

"This is it," Clarke said after a long while.

He looked at her and she smiled. He knew it too.

Home.


End file.
